In this chapter, we learn that we're in the middle of a "treatment" . It's a fancy way of saying "treatment," but it's not really a treatment at all. We're talking about the kind of treatment you get when you're stuck in a hospital bed for a long time. In this case, the treatment is to turn the patient's body into a "refrigerator," which means that the patient can no longer speak or act like a normal human being. We learn that this isn't the first time we've seen this kind of thing: back in Chapter 2, we saw a patient who was "transformed" into a talking refrigerator. This time, the patient is a little freaked out by the idea of being transformed into a refrigerator, but he doesn't care. He just wants to get some beer. He wants to be able to speak and act like normal. But he can't do that if he turns back into the refrigerator, so he tells the patient to "retract" and "hold on" , which is basically the same thing you would do if you were